Today in History

[Uncle-A]

3 May 1919
Singer Songwriter Pete Seeger is born.

3 May 1933
Singer Songwriter James Brown is born.

 

[Uncle-A]

Today is International Nurses Day 2022.

THANKS to all the Nurses

 

[Uncle-A]

17 May 1971
At 10:30PM a caravan of 19 elephants walked through the Lincoln Tunnel from NJ to NY City so they could put on a show at MSG the next day.

 

[Bad Bob]

5/18/2022
We had friend visiting from Denver looking to possibly move up to Spokane; they never came back.

 

[James]

17 May 1971
At 10:30PM a caravan of 19 elephants walked through the Lincoln Tunnel from NJ to NY City so they could put on a show at MSG the next day.

Interesting. Apparently that was due to a nationwide railroad strike stranding them in Northern NJ. They paid a toll of $9.
(1971 toll was $1 Eastbound, no toll Westbound).

Don’t know what they did between 1972 and 1980, but from 1981 to the last circus at MSGarden in 2010, the elephants used the Queens Midtown Tunnel to cross the East River every year.

Looks like in the past they’ve used the 59th St Bridge from Queens, and a bridge from the Bronx and then walked down 2nd ave.

Patrick A. Burns/The New York Times
March 1955

Circus Elephants of New York, Vanishing (Published 2016)

A look back at 70 years of circus elephant photographs as the Ringling Bros. elephants get set for their last New York City show this weekend.

www.nytimes.com

 

[Wendy]

May 18, 1980.
Mt. St. Helens blew its top.

Oop, @Bad Bob beat me to it!

 

[dbostedo]

5/18/2022...

For a second there, I thought it blew up again, today!!

 

[James]

5/18/2022
We had friend visiting from Denver looking to possibly move up to Spokane; they never came back.
View attachment 169458

Were they killed in the explosion or it’s just a concurrent event?

 

[Bad Bob]

Were they killed in the explosion or it’s just a concurrent event?

They are fine. Flew in to do an interview in Pulman over a weekend, that turned into 8 or 9 days until the airlines flew again.
The rest of the story in our household; the wife had just done a perm in her hair and it was days before she could wash out the dust from her hair. She was not real happy about that. It was a very interesting summer.

 

[Uncle-A]

Interesting. Apparently that was due to a nationwide railroad strike stranding them in Northern NJ. They paid a toll of $9.
(1971 toll was $1 Eastbound, no toll Westbound).

Don’t know what they did between 1972 and 1980, but from 1981 to the last circus at MSGarden in 2010, the elephants used the Queens Midtown Tunnel to cross the East River every year.

Looks like in the past they’ve used the 59th St Bridge from Queens, and a bridge from the Bronx and then walked down 2nd ave.

View attachment 169459
Patrick A. Burns/The New York Times
March 1955

Circus Elephants of New York, Vanishing (Published 2016)

A look back at 70 years of circus elephant photographs as the Ringling Bros. elephants get set for their last New York City show this weekend.

www.nytimes.com

Thanks for adding the photo.

 

[Uncle-A]

A little NJ history from the nearby town of Jackson.

 

[Uncle-A]

3 June 1966
It was a Sleepy, Dusty, Delta Day.

 

[Uncle-A]

6 June 1944

D-Day, the invasion to free the people of Europe.

 

[Jim Kenney]

6 June 1944

D-Day, the invasion to free the people of Europe.

My dad graduated from the US Naval Academy class of 1943 and was at D-Day, or at least, very close by. He was a gunnery officer on a destroyer off the coast of Omaha Beach shelling German fortifications during the invasion. For many years he downplayed his participation in that action as just one of many events in a 26 year active duty Navy career. But later in his life (he died in 2013 at age 94) my siblings and I got him to talk more about D-Day, prodding him with the fact that he'd witnessed perhaps the most important single military action in the history of the world.

This is not his ship, but a sister destroyer at Normandy:

About ten years ago I obtained a copy of this print courtesy of my friend @Johnfmh , it's by a famous WWII military artist, Dwight Shepler who also happened to do numerous very nice ski posters before and after the war.

 

[Bill Miles]

My dad's D day story:

He was in the Navy Seabees. Instead of some godforsaken Pacific island, he was sent to England to build things.

One of the things was quarters for an admiral.

When his men were griping about doing this, he told them that it was useful so that the admiral would be rested and make good decisions.

The admiral blew his brains out the night before D-day.

At least that was his story; I have never been able to find anything online about it.

 

[dbostedo]

I guess if we're sharing D-Day stories, I'll share my grandfather's... parts told to me by my grandmother when she got older (and hopefully I've got it straight). My grandfather never spoke about it as I understand it from my family, but he died when I was 12 so I wouldn't have heard much anyway.

He was born outside Zagreb, Croatia, and immigrated to the US when he was a teenager. Enlisted in his early 20's during the war, and got married on furlough between training and shipping out to England. He was at Utah beach on D-Day, and made it off the beach, but was shot twice - once in the back of his shoulder, and once in the butt - while trying to pull his CO back under cover. (I do remember seeing the twisted scars on his shoulder as a kid.) As he was laying there after having been shot, a German soldier approach and my grandfather crossed himself... and the German soldier kicked a coat over my grandfather's face, and moved on.

My grandfather was found sometime later, and wound up in the hospital. He wrote my grandmother that he was injured, but would be OK. She said she was so happy, because she thought he was coming home, then got another letter a couple of weeks later saying he had decided to stay on to help out where he could. He received a purple heart and bronze star. He came back to live outside of Pittsburgh, worked for Westinghouse for a long time, and raised 5 girls, the oldest of which is my mom.

 

[Jim Kenney]

Saving Private Ryan's a great film about D-Day, but The Longest Day was good too. It provides a bit more of a comprehensive overview of the events and has the benefit of being made only 18 years after the real deal:
Oops, looks like you have to go to youtube and search for it, but it's there.

 

[Uncle-A]

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned Captain James Stagg of the RAF. He was the weather man that gave the go ahead to General Eisenhower for the landing in France. The weather was a major factor in the invasion, for days the weather was not very good for the landing and it held up until Captain Stagg could give the go ahead due to a window of better weather conditions on the 6th.

 

[Bill Miles]

In the early 70's in the Air Force I had a older Lt. Col. temporary Squadron Commander who was a glider pilot on D-day. I gathered it was pretty scary, but he never went into too much detail.

 

[wiread]

I'm a day late, but we were at an air show this weekend. Here's a pick of a D-Day combat Vet I was able to get on Saturday and a bit of backstory.


This war veteran, Placid Lassie released her first glider over France at 0400 hours 78 years ago as Operation Overlord began. Since tomorrow is the anniversary of D-day, I think it was fortuitous we were able to see and hear her rumble over the skies once again.

Not only did this plane see action in the liberation of France, but also operation Market Garden which created a route from the Netherlands and in to Germany. These were 2 of the most important operations for the Allied offensive as they fought to liberate Europe.

After the war she was sold to civilian companies and did her work as a DC3 mail and passenger plan for many years. By 2014 she had been renamed Union Jack Dak and restored to her war time colors with some of her history lost other than they knew it was a wartime C-47. At the 70th Anniversary celebration of D-day she was flown to Normandy where the crew was informed that one of the crew members from Market Garden, Ed Tunison was still alive. He was able to be reunited with his plane and the crew learned her war time name and so Union Jack Dak instantly became Placid Lassie once again.

Here she is in her D-day paint scheme.